EA's Head of Ads, Alexander Dao, sat down with journalist Christopher Dring at The Game Business this week to talk about how the publisher sees in-game advertising evolving across its biggest franchises. The interview gives Sims players a direct look at how EA distinguishes between games where ads fit naturally and games where they do not.
The short version: The Sims 4 is not about to become a billboard. But the reasoning behind that decision, and where EA draws the line, is worth understanding.
Sports games first, creative sandboxes last
Dao spent most of the conversation talking about sports titles. Games like EA Sports FC and Madden already mirror real-world environments filled with advertising. Stadiums have sideline banners, broadcast overlays, and sponsor logos baked into how the sport looks on TV. Placing ads in those spaces feels like part of the simulation rather than an interruption.
The Sims sits on the opposite end of that spectrum. Players treat it as a creative space for building and storytelling, not a broadcast environment. Dao did not suggest The Sims was being considered for new ad formats, and he was explicit that intrusive placements would not work in a game built around personal expression.
The Coach model as a template
What EA Ads is doing with The Sims is running audience research to find brand partnerships players actually want. The Coach collaboration was the specific example Dao pointed to. EA's internal surveys had already shown that Sims players were interested in fashion-focused content, and Coach matched the tone of the game without disrupting play.
Dao framed this as the model going forward: if advertising touches The Sims, it will be tied to content players have expressed interest in, chosen through surveys and audience data rather than dropped in as a revenue grab. The word he kept returning to was trust, built over time rather than pushed on players all at once.
The industry context behind the push
The interview also referenced Matthew Ball's State of Video Gaming in 2026 report, which highlights how mobile advertising revenue has grown to nearly match total consumer spending on PC and console games. EA sees the gap between mobile (where ads are standard) and PC/console (where they barely exist) as a missed opportunity, but Dao stressed that filling it requires player buy-in.
Ball's report also flagged Direct-to-Consumer channels as a growth area. For Sims players, that includes things like The Sims 4 Marketplace, which lets EA sell content without a platform middleman taking a cut.
What about future Sims titles?
Dao did not promise that experimental advertising would never reach the franchise. The Sims Community's reporting notes that future titles such as Project X could be a different story, since new games offer a blank slate for testing ideas that established live-service titles cannot easily introduce. But for The Sims 4 specifically, the message was clear: EA Ads is watching what players respond to, not preparing formats that would change how the game feels.
The full interview is available on The Game Business.
Source: Sims Community